Citrus fruits include grapefruits, limes, lemons, cumquats, tangerines, oranges and the like. They are generally spherical and composed of an interior edible pulp and an exterior protecting semi-rigid peel. A pulp half section defines a plurality of sector shaped segments each consisting of an edible soft part lodged into a cavity called the lith, and two opposite semi rigid fiber partitions. The fiber partitions radially inwardly merge at a central semi-rigid apex fiber portion, and radially outwardly merge with the peel or rind. Seeds or "pips" are also lodged into the lith.
Existing tools for extracting the succulent part of the pulp from the citrus fruit are usually of the type by which the pulp is crushed with a semi spherical open frame made of cutting knives, and the liquid solution (which contains the lith, and also the somewhat undesirable fiber content of the partitions) thereby obtained is collected and filtered (to reject the non-succulent seeds and larger fiber portions) prior to drinking. Other tools for extracting the pulp include cutting devices that effect segmentation of the pulp, i.e. make sector shaped cuts thereunto, and/or derind the pulp, i.e. scrape the pulp only about its interface with the peel.
These tools are inefficient, particularly with respect to the thoroughness in their withdrawing of all the edible part of the pulp.